


now people just get uglier (and i have no sense of time)

by ChibiFrieza



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-09
Updated: 2014-02-09
Packaged: 2018-01-11 19:16:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1176867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChibiFrieza/pseuds/ChibiFrieza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam remembers everything.  It's getting in the way of now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	now people just get uglier (and i have no sense of time)

**Author's Note:**

> Post-Season 6. The wall is down.

Dawn is breaking, mother-of-pearl above the shipyards, and Sam has not slept.

Dean was asleep earlier, solid shape in the other bed. He will wake up soon if he hasn't already. Sam can predict how it will go; on top of an entire lifetime of knowledge, he watched Dean wake up for six straight months of mornings, and he remembers each time now, catalogued in the moment with the detached precision of the uninvested. Dean wakes up slow, to all appearances not totally cognizant at first, but he won't let himself have the luxury of pretending to be groggy once he notices Sam is gone. He will snap upright, scan the room, panicked professional. Swear at himself, and then at Sam, and then at himself again.

He'll go for his phone next. Sam's is not in any of his pockets, so it must still be on the table where he left it; it's a toss-up whether Dean will notice it before it rings.

Sam has gone missing enough times, seen his brother upset enough times, that he should know how this will play out, but... Cas is out, for obvious reasons. Bobby is also out, for related reasons. 

There is no one else to call.

Sam turns his back on the docks and begins the long walk back to Claremont.

 

____

 

He's been losing time. Dean says it's fine, it's okay, Sammy, it'll get better, but it's not okay. He's got vague recollections of something like a fever dream and something like a hunt, before the memories of Hell came back and obliterated everything with sunspots. Hellspots? Retinal burn without the retinas. He should ask Dean to corroborate, verify this new term, but no, never mind, there's no use asking. Dean never had to remember everything at once; Dean never forgot.

He remembers pieces of himself, and how he's supposed to be all back together again, whole cloth, but everything is tattered and singed and he must have gotten the wrong impression at some point because this is not whole. This is holes, this is inadvertent lace that no one thinks is beautiful.

The holes are a problem. The Hell comes through sometimes; he hits a sunspot – Hellspot – and he can't see through it for a while, and then he's somewhere else, or doing something new, with no recollection of between.

This isn't supposed to happen anymore.

He passes a man on the street. The man is short and hunched over in a sweat-marked shirt, walking rapidly through the brightening morning. He glares at Sam in passing. Sam is positive that he has never seen the man before in his life. It would be better if he had; then he could be certain whether or not he had done him any wrong. As it is, he will never know.

 

_____

 

The day after Cas, Dean started driving and didn't stop until three states lay between them. The day after that, he started driving again, doubling back and crisscrossing, trying to confuse the trail like maybe an ascended god could track the scent of the car like a bloodhound. There were only two days of that, because Sam was in shreds in the passenger seat.

The Impala stayed with Bobby. He was having it towed, he said, and they could come get it when it was safe. He'd definitely have it fixed by then. 

Pigs might fly by then. 

Dean is coping badly with the necessity of driving a stolen Ford. Waking up to the void left by his brother's somnabulance will not be helping his general wellbeing. _General pain in my ass, Sammy._ He could reconstruct Dean from memory, if he had to; every mannerism, every irritated comeback, every piece and chink of his armoured bravado. Humpty Dumpty with a jigsaw puzzle.

A cyclist passes him, going the same direction. _My kingdom for a bicycle_. He only knows where he's going because he's read the maps. All those years in shotgun, navigation is hardwired in. By car he's only maybe thirty minutes away, now, but it'll take him hours to walk.

Or he could just steal another car.

 

_____

 

He didn't bring his key, either. He hammers on the door and there's no answer, so he sits down outside the room and waits.

The flames come up and lick at his feet while he sits there, then up his legs, and then after a while the flesh starts to char and fall off. There is laughter coming from somewhere, but it's hard to hear over the screams. He thinks he can taste blood. His father comes to look patronisingly at him through yellow eyes and wields a scalpel. _Sam, Sammy, I always knew it would come to this. Don't walk away when I'm talking to you, boy. Look at me, Sam._

_Sammy. Look at me, wake up. Hey. Sammy, hey._

Dean is back.

 _I didn't-_ says Sam.

 _I know_ , says Dean. _Come on, up._ He hauls Sam to his feet and gets him inside.

Sam collapses on the nearest bed, which is all unfurled from when Dean got up. There is a longsuffering sigh from behind him, and then Dean is taking off his boots and pulling the blankets over him and glaring in the way that means he's not angry so much as scared.

 _I'm back, Dean. It's fine._ It's not fine, but someone has to say it.

 _Yeah._ Dean moves out of his field of vision. Sam can hear him collapse in one of the chairs by the window, and then he's asleep again.

It's ice this time.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again by Bob Dylan. Originally posted on [Livejournal](http://chibifrieza.livejournal.com/495787.html). Thank you for reading; comments are appreciated!


End file.
